Gmail gets more Gemini powers, Sam Altman's creepy startup, TikTok's doomscrolling fix
Plus: A new OS for product development, Get up to speed with the latest AI Models, Tech jobs report
Hi product people 👋, Rich here with your Weekly Briefing. Welcome to the 270+ new subscribers who joined us since last week!
Coming up this week, the latest from Sam Altman’s creepy startup and its plans to become the everything app, a fascinating case study into how one simple design change resulted in a 25% jump in conversion rate and a new Gemini feature in Gmail that actually sounds pretty useful.
Plus, we explore which AI models are most popular according to a new study - with a surprising 80% drop in a model that used to reign supreme and a closer look at the AI agent tool that’s almost reaching Deepseek levels of hype this week: Manus.
Happy Friday and enjoy the weekend ahead!
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Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product this week:
Knowledge Series - How to understand technical architecture with AI
In this Knowledge Series, we’ll explore some of the ways you can use AI to understand existing technical architecture quickly, visualize technical systems and data flows and even generate your own personalised technical architecture documentation that you can refer back to when creating new features or crafting your strategy so that you don’t end up committing to building stuff that’s undeliverable.
Deep - AI Coding Products Explored
Over 25% of Google’s code is now AI generated, over 90% of engineers say they use AI coding in their software development process and this week, Anthropic’s CEO predicted that within 12 months, nearly all code could be AI generated. If you're keen to get an understanding of what the latest set of AI coding tools actually do — and how they might help you to speed up your development process — this deep dive should help. (Department of Product)
UX - How blurring a background resulted in a 25% jump in form completion rates
Even though the dashboard screenshot was filled with dummy data (no personalization at all), visitors couldn’t tell it was fake—and they couldn’t resist wanting to get past that form to see what awaited them. It made visitors want to see more → and increased conversion rates. A neat idea if you’re considering tactics for improving conversion rates of your own. (Tom Orbach Substack)
Growth case study - YouTube at 20: How the video colossus launched the creator economy
YouTube now sustains thousands of businesses that have grown into small media companies, primarily by distributing their shows on the platform. Mohan calls them “the start-ups of Hollywood.” The video platform continues to post double-digit growth off a large revenue base. It’s taking share from traditional TV, where ad sales have slowed or declined: GroupM projects just 1.9% growth worldwide in 2025 for linear television advertising. (Variety Magazine)
Design - How to design an AI Agent
Explore the future of UX design with agent-centered design — a framework that helps designers create intelligent, adaptable AI agents. (UX Magazine)
Interview - Amazon’s CPO Panos Panay on the long road to Alexa’s overhaul
Panos Panay is in charge of devices and services at Amazon — that's everything from Alexa and Kindle to Ring, Eero, and even the Project Kuiper satellite internet service that's meant to compete with Starlink. He's led the team through giving Alexa a big AI infusion which is what drew him to Amazon after nearly 20 years with Microsoft. He sees AI as a platform shift that will change the way we use computers. (The Verge)
Strategy - Two frameworks for balancing AI product innovation and risk
Organizations that view AI as just another technology project will increasingly find themselves irrelevant. Success will go to those who adopt a balanced approach—being radically optimistic about AI’s potential while remaining cautious about its risks. In this piece, HBR explore two frameworks you can use to balance innovation and risk. (Harvard Business Review)
New product features and innovation this week
Everyone’s talking about a new AI agent called Manus. It hasn’t quite surpassed Deepseek on the hype front at its peak but it’s come pretty close this week. And a major reason for the hype is Manus’ “agentic” capabilities. For example, it can take a zip file of resumes, extract key info, rank candidates based on criteria, and create a spreadsheet. Other use cases listed on its website that could be useful for product teams include data analysis, research and productivity. Watch it in action here.
Meanwhile…
Google has added native image generation into its Gemini 2.0 Flash models - and it looks pretty impressive. You can do things like merge text and images together, edit images using conversational prompts and generate legible text within images (something generative AI has struggled with so far). You can even take your own headshot and transform it into full body images. Logan Kilpatrick, the lead PM at Google, says that what makes this unique vs other models is Gemini’s “broad world knowledge”.
Google is also rolling out a handy new Gemini powered feature for Gmail. An add to calendar button will extract key information from an email and create calendar events from it. This is a far more useful application of Gemini vs email summarisation.
In other news…
WhatsApp is reportedly testing out a new feature that will organize conversations into threads.
OpenAI has released a series of new APIs to help developers / product teams add new AI capabilities to products. Capabilities include: web search, file search and computer use.
Sam Altman is continuing to develop his other (creepy) startup, formerly known as Worldcoin, now known as World. It seeks to become the next ‘everything app’ and plans to roll out a new form of payment method that includes a native crypto token and a biometric eyeball scanner known as an orb. The idea is that as AI agents start to take over the web, humans will need better ways to verify their “humanness” - and an eyeball scanning orb is one way to do it. It all sounds rather dystopian but this week, the company rolled out a mini app store that allows users to pay for items online. It’s not quite ready to add to your payment roadmap plans but it’s something worth keeping an eye on (no pun intended).
Tiktok is adding a new feature to help teens battle doom scrolling addiction. If a teen is using the app after 10pm, TikTok will show a full screen wind down reminder that will play calming music.
Get up to speed with the latest AI models
Tools you can use
Browser Use - let AI take control of your browser.
Zuni - add AI to your chrome sidebar to access all of the latest models including GPT, Deepseek, Claude and more.
Embra - the AI operating system to accelerate product development. Embra takes notes, writes docs, surfaces insights, and streamlines product ops.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
DALL-E usage for image generation has dropped almost 80% from its peak to just 10% of requests. Google’s Imagen3 is up to 30% market share. In video, Google’s Veo-2 has emerged in the past few weeks to challenge the current leader Runway. After a slow start, Google is starting to dominate. This data is representative of requests sent via Poe only but is still an indicator of the overall market. View the report.
60% of connected tech consumers have not used cash or checks to make a payment in the last 30 days. 26% of mainstream tech users have used their mobile device for payments but this is down from a high of 33% in Q4 2024. Are some users retreating away from mobile payments? Read the full How People Pay report.
Anthropic’s CEO says that in 3-6 months AI will write 90% of code and in 12 months, AI will write all code.
Spotify released its annual Loud and Clear report on the music industry. It says Spotify continues to lead the music industry in payouts, with more than $10 billion distributed in music royalties in 2024.
Adobe has disappointed investors with its latest earnings report. The company generated just $125 million in annual recurring revenue from AI. Despite Adobe management’s optimism, AI-related revenue accounted for just 2.2% of FQ1 earnings and is expected to reach only ~$250 million for FY 2025, or 1% annual contribution to revenue.
Almost 25% of job openings posted this year in the US so far are seeking employees with AI experience. A record number of US adults are now working multiple jobs, too, with 5.4% of the total adult workforce in multiple jobs. But tech unemployment continues to rise.
Other product news in brief
🎨Apple’s next OS updates will reportedly include the biggest design overhaul in year.
🗒️Meta plans to test community notes across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
📼Sonos has ditched its upcoming plans for a video player.
📱Oracle is reportedly in the running to take over TikTok in the US.
Paid subscribers get the full DoP Substack including: The Knowledge Series for sharpening their tech skills, AI tutorials for putting AI into practice at work and DoP Deep dive reports to learn from the world’s top tech companies.